Mr Evans added: “All I ask for now is for this meeting to be a positive one, and I hope to have Alfie, on the terms of mine and Alder Hey, to be home within a day or two.

“If the meeting doesn’t go well today, well then, I’ll go back to court.”

He accused doctors at the hospital of being “wrong” about their diagnosis: “Alfie lives, comfortably, happily, without ventilation, without any form of ventilation.

“That must be enough for you now to consider that Alfie may prove you wrong.”

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Mr Evans said Alfie was “not suffering” and not in pain.

He said: “As I sit next to Alfie’s bedside, every second of every day, it encourages me more and more that he will live for ‘x’ amount of months, possibly years.”

Police remained outside the hospital on Thursday, after Alder Hey said its staff had experienced “unprecedented personal abuse”.

In an open letter, the hospital chairman Sir David Henshaw and chief executive Louise Shepherd: “Having to carry on our usual day-to-day work in a hospital that has required a significant police presence just to keep our patients, staff and visitors safe is completely unacceptable.”

Alfie has been at the centre of a life-or-death treatment battle, with his parents trying to block doctors from withdrawing life support in a sometimes acrimonious six-month dispute which has seen a series of court battles.